Interview #66: Padparadscha Parallel Edition
Mikayla Baer, Guardians and Steven Kwan fan, baseball card collector
Mikayla Baer is a Cleveland Guardians season ticket holder and Steven Kwan’s #1 fan. And after hearing why, I am also a huge Steven Kwan fan, but I will not be collecting his baseball cards as she currently has what’s likely the world’s largest collection of his. When she’s not at her day job involving cancer research, she’s off doing more important things like going to baseball games around the country, golfing and avoiding talking about the Browns.
Mikayla is an endlessly positive person and a joy to talk to. The way she lit up while talking about going to minor league games, sharing her passion for baseball with her family, and baseball cards would make even the most jaded baseball fan pause and remember why they love the sport to begin with. In an era where the news and world events can churn your stomach, we need to remember that there are plenty of amazing everyday people doing amazing things. She loves helping young kids get their card collections started, on more than one occasion she’s sent a lot of cards to a parent who reached out about the hobby. She even recently assisted in rescuing some tourists who had driven off the side of a mountain road in Colorado.
We talked about her passion for baseball, all sorts of details about the baseball card hobby, and why Cleveland is vastly underrated as a fun city to visit. You can also follow her on Twitter: @mikbaer
Note: Some answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity. Interview was conducted on 6/20/25
Holy Toledo
Who got you into baseball?
We watched a lot of the Indians growing up. My family's actually from closer to Detroit. Everyone's a Detroit fan over where I grew up, but my dad was always a big Indians fan. I actually grew up going to a ton of Toledo Mud Hens games. So watching the farm system of Detroit, but then rooting for the Indians. Good times. My mom’s side is Tigers fans.
So your family was the reason you’re a big baseball fan?
Yeah, I think so. Also, baseball's romantic, right? Nothing's cooler than going to a game and seeing a little kid get a ball. It was always my mom and dad taking us to games when we were kids, and there was always so much fun. And Dad was always going through all of the pitches with us. He was showing us knuckleballs when we were kids, it was so much fun.
So you guys went to a lot of minor league games.
Yeah. I only went to one Major League game growing up. I would have been 16. Before that would be only minor league games.
What was so fun about going to the minor league games?
You got to see Muddy the Mud Hen. It's the only time we ever got ice cream in a helmet. It’s just fun. It was to hang out with my family, and we would always bring our gloves. We’d always get tickets where we could catch a ball. It was just a cool thing we did as kids is going to Mud Hens games.
Do you think you'd be as big a baseball fan without Minor League Baseball?
I actually don't think so. I feel like that was where the original love for the sport started. I didn't get back into it until after COVID. I had just moved to Connecticut and didn't really have a lot of friends because it's hard to transplant across the country. Baseball just kind of fell into my lap. And I was like, oh, this is great, this is so much fun. So it was fun to fall in love with baseball because I was far away from home. We’d call and talk about baseball games, and we would complain about the umps. I mean, we still do that. We talk a couple times a week, so always something to talk about.
So you played sports growing up?
Yeah, I played golf in college. That's a funny part of all of this is I'm good at golf. I'm not even good at softball or baseball. I played softball up through middle school and then I play in a rec league now. I'm not good, but it's fun.
So the ball’s gotta be still for you to be good.
I'm good at fielding. Just not so much at batting. I didn't play softball in high school, my softball swing was messing up my golf swing and golf we knew could pay for college.
Where'd you go to college?
I went to Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Which is close to home, because I like my family.
I’m glad Muddy the Mud Hen got some love in this project. He looks like a nice bird. And once again, affordable baseball growing up provided the spark for a lifelong fandom. When MLB talks about growing the game, they talk about international markets, media rights and jersey sales. What they do instead is slash minor league teams, raise prices to the point MLB games are premium events and slap ads all over the players and field.
You can get an 18-game plan for the Toledo Mud Hens for $198. That gets you in the door for a quarter of the season for triple-A baseball at one of the nicer minor league parks where you can watch, buy some beers and a hot dog, take your family, watch as much or as little baseball as you want, and go home feeling like you got plenty of bang for your buck, for $11 a game, plus parking in downtown Toledo. They even have a shuttle (the Muddy Shuttle) for $3 round trip, so $14 to get there and in the gates. Dodger Stadium, with no public transit access, is $40 to park, and for the game tonight, July 3rd, the cheapest seat on the Dodgers website is $134 plus fees. So almost the entire 18-game plan for one upper deck seat.
Card Collecting
What do you do for work?
I'm a clinical research project manager. I run clinical trials at a clinic in bladder cancer.
That's gotta be a stressful job. I'm sure baseball helps.
Baseball does help. It's such a refresher. I mean with the Rafael Devers trade, everyone's like, this is the worst thing in my life. And I was like, honestly, I get it, but I go to work and it's always stressful and if the worst thing that’s going to happen to me is a player getting traded in baseball, I still get to go sit out in the sunshine and drink a beer and that sounds awesome.
Yeah, but what if it was Steven Kwan?
OK, so my family is mentally preparing me for this. This is my official take on Steven Kwan being traded. One: I would be devastated, utterly devastated. However, I get it. If I was in the same position, like if I played in California and my parents were in Detroit, I'd want to play for Detroit. I'm just being honest, I get that. I was a college athlete and I chose to stay local for the same reason. I get it. Also, I'm just a huge Steven Kwan fan, I'm gonna follow him forever. The only thing I'm gonna hate if he goes to the West Coast is that I can't stay up that late, that's gonna be rough for me, but I will buy whatever jersey he has. However, I'm optimistic the Dolans can afford him. He's not going to ask for like $200million. He's going to be like a $40million kind of guy.
I didn't realize he was in trade rumors when I brought that up.
Just this week, cause we've lost like 4 games in a row. He has two more years on his arbitration contract. So he's ours for two more years, you know how Twitter is.
So how did you become a huge Steven Kwan fan? How did he become your favorite player?
Initially, I remember as a kid always watching Ichiro highlights. I just love the idea of not being a big hitter, playing insane defense and then always getting on base. When I would play softball as a kid, that seemed like a much more prolific way to play the game, you know? And also I grew up in the era where everyone would hate the Yankees. And so I think of the Yankees, I just think of the Bronx Bombers and just hitting tons of home runs. And I'm like, is that even fun baseball? I want to see singles and doubles and I want to see elite defense. Defense is something you actually have to work on, it's not like you just wake up and are good at it. I always personally loved playing defense. I hated hitting. I loved playing defense. I think that alone was like my first inkling of, like, holy shit, I love his brand of baseball. And then I learned more about him as a person and he's super into mental health matters and he's just a very good person.
I think for collecting in general, a lot of people ask me, like, who they should invest in. I get a lot of DMs, like, hey, who's the next big player I should invest in? And I need everyone to know that I have no idea. I collect players because I like them and it's never going to be any deeper than that. Steven Kwan is a genuinely good person. I'm not worried about some weird rumor surfacing. I think he's a good person who has a good head on his shoulders and his heart's in the right place. I like what he does off the field probably more than what he does on the field. He's so easy to root for.
He won the Gold Glove every year so far of his career.
Yeah, it’s just crazy, right? Average of .310 every year and then always a Gold Glover. He's not had a season where he's not a Gold Glover. Also does incredible things for the Asian community in Cleveland. He runs a chess club for local kids out of an inner-city school here in Cleveland. He has a mental health awareness program coming up for high school kids. I'm just telling you, everything he does, he's not putting his name on it unless it’s bettering somebody. And I love that. When I met him one time he was so nice. I was like shaking. I was so nervous. So I appreciate that.
Speaking of collecting cards, what sparked that interest?
That is a super weird story. My buddy sells art prints and they're awesome. I love them. He started making his prints because his dad died and he didn't know what to do with himself. I bought one of Cy Young, and in the art prints he sends out wax packs. I had never opened a baseball card before. It really wasn’t until Daniel sent us wax packs and I opened my first card. The first cards I opened were the 1989 Big Cards. And I was like, oh, these are so cool because these are people my dad talked about.
And I was like, but wait, wouldn't it be so cool to open players I care about? The first card I ever bought, I just went to eBay and I was like I'm gonna buy a pink card because that sounds cute. Like, let's make it cute. And it was the 2023 magenta sparkle 1/399. It was the first pink card of Steven Kwan I had. And from there on out, I was like, I really like these pink cards. I didn't realize that people don't do that. I wasn't online yet, in the social online realm yet, knowing that people usually collect rainbows or they go for full sets. They don't just collect the same player and they don't do just by color. That apparently was weird, so I thought that was even more fun. So I've just committed fully.
So you probably have the largest collection of pink cards?
I 100% have the largest collection of pink cards. I would put money on that. I know I don't have the largest collection overall because I am very niche in what I buy. For Series 2 right now I'm obsessed with the card because he's doing a little Mario thing.
Ohh yeah, they make the Mario coin noise in Cleveland.
Yeah. It's so great. I fully intend to buy so many of those and I actually have so many on the way. But I'm so excited. And he has his first heavy lumber card. Which is super fun because heavy lumber is usually associated with these big bomb hitters and he's not that.
What made you want to get further into baseball card collecting?
I think it was just the timing. It was right when I was getting back into baseball, right? It was like 2022, right, when Steven Kwan was a rookie is when I started to get really back into baseball. That's when I moved to Connecticut. I didn't have the support system that I usually had. I needed something to talk to my family about daily. That's when I got the art print and I got the wax pack and I think the timing of me finally becoming really obsessed with baseball. I think it was just a perfect storm kind of thing.
Have you ever feel intimidated by the collecting hobby?
For sure, it's a super intimidating hobby, but it's a collection. Whatever you put into it is what you're going to get out of it. Some of my favorite cards are non-numbered; I have some 1/1’s, but like my favorite picture is a 2025 Heritage. There's some days you're going through and you're seeing people who clearly have the type of money to invest that I don't have, and that’s a bummer.
The guy who owns the 2 pink Padparadschas for Steven Kwan’s rookie year, he owns like 7 or 8 Shohei Ohtani 1/1 rookie autos. It feels very intimidating, like I can't compete. However, I'm going to get that card and I know it. I’m going to win him over on charisma alone.
Or we could steal it.
That's what my friend said. It's in the vault. That made me so sad. It's in the PSA vault. So he's not even looking at them. I'm gonna like kiss them goodbye every day and he's not even looking at them.
Well, we can do an Ocean's 11 heist.
Thank you. You're the third person to suggest that. I'm so glad I'm in the majority here.
You got four people, then. I don't have any skills, but I watched the movies.
Me neither, we could talk to people. We could distract.
You're the one who needs to go get it. So you've got to be Ocean.
Oh my God, that doesn't seem like me. The Padparadscha is the 1/1. That's a sapphire and they are gorgeous. They're my favorite parallel. And I’m mad that Topps keeps making 1/1’s pink, because then I have to find them.
Maybe next year they'll do a different color.
I mean, it's actually fun. I have a lot of the weird ones, one of the weird ones, it took me forever to find, was the 2022 Topps Fire magenta out of 25. People aren't ripping Topps Fire and it's now a defunct product. So that took me forever to find. And so now that I'm collecting those, I'm having a good time chasing the 1/1’s.
What's the coolest thing you've gotten in a pack you opened yourself?
Out of the 2024 archives, I pulled a gold Nolan Ryan autograph out of 50. It was sick.
Your dad must have liked that then.
He did. He did like that a lot. I sold it for more Steven Kwan cards. But Dad thought it was really cool.
That's the only time you would trade Nolan Ryan for Steven Kwan, I think.
So anytime I have a 1/1, it’s pink, I always chase the rainbow. So for Sapphire and Heritage Mini, I'm always chasing the rainbows of it because the 1/1’s themselves are pink.
And what is the rainbow?
For Sapphire, the Padparadscha is 1/1, red /5, black in 2024 and 2025 is /10, but it's purple in 2023 and 2022, and then gold /50, green /75. So you're trying to get one of every color, but the ultimate goal is to get the 1/1 because only one person can have the true rainbow of every color. So a lot of people only do rainbows up to the reds, but I only am doing the rainbow because I want the pink 1/1.
So you've got some rainbows?
I don't.
Are you close?
I'm close on a lot of them. I have the Padparadscha Steven Kwan of 2024 1/1. I have every card in this rainbow except for the red /5. I can't find it. I'm optimistic I will find it though, I have all the other colors. So this rainbow is my most complete. And then the Topps Heritage Steven Kwan mini is pink, 1/1, and I have all of the other colors in this rainbow except for the orange /five. Three of them have sold, so surely someone's going to resell at some point.
Those are my 2 closest rainbows. For the Bowman 2022 Steven Kwan, I have all of them except for the Padparadscha 1/1. The one I'm doing the worst on is his playing rookie.
What is it about card collecting that's gotten you so deep into this hobby. It’s only been three or four years?
It's been so much fun. You know what I think sold me on the hobby, but I think it's going to be the “Fuck Face” parallel. That was the first parallel. And then when Jackson Holiday had a fun face and they had the saw cut and they had the black box and the white scribble version in the modern product. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I love when people try to do the complete fuck face error rainbow. I have the 1994 Simpsons Skybox fish face. My family loves The Simpsons and I thought it was so funny.
It only came out in some comic book in 1994, so it was a limited release. You couldn't buy it from the Skybox series. You had to only get it from that comic.
It is refreshing to hear someone talk about baseball cards and not talk about money.
Oh, I don't care about that. People message me and they're like, who should I buy? I did buy into Steven Kwan for much cheaper than you could buy into Steven Kwan now. That's not why I did it. I also collect Kyle Manzardo, and by collect I mean, I have like 7 of his cards. He was having a small home run streak and they’re like, oh, you called this prospect! And I said, I thought he was goofy and I liked his mustache. And that's the only reason I collect him.
That mustache is awful.
No, it's bad and that's why it's funny. He's just a goofy dude.
It's a horrible mustache. His parents should not let him leave the house like that.
It's so funny. I like it. He's committed to it. Baseball cards are not about investing. If anything, I'm hemorrhaging money, not making money. I have no intention to sell. Like, it'd be so cool to own a Shohei Ohtani autograph. I love Shohei, don't get me wrong, one of the most prolific, probably the most prolific baseball player I'm ever gonna see in my lifetime, if not everyone's lifetime. I would just rather spend money on other baseball cards.
I'm also a huge proponent that baseball cards should be with the people who love them the most. People reach out to me asking me if I'm selling stuff. I'm never selling Steven Kwan, but I'll sell literally anything else. Some guy was asking me about, I had a bunch of Bob Feller 1960s cards that I recently sold off. He's like, why would you sell those? And I said because some guy liked Bob Feller better than me like. It's just not that deep. They should be with people who actually want to have them and not sitting in a vault where you can't see them.
When I interviewed Michael Osacky, he mentioned that there's so much money going into cards these days, like private equity and billionaires. There's a kind of status with some of this stuff.
There definitely is. That's not my favorite part of the hobby. There's tons of good things about the hobby that I enjoy. I love the people. I have made so many incredible friends through the hobby. There's one guy who I talk to every day about baseball cards, and now one of my best friends, and I only met him because of baseball cards. People send me Steven Kwan cards, even just their bases, all the time. And it's just so refreshing.
I always give away tons of cards. One time a dad reached out to me and he's like, my daughter loves your pink card collection. And I was like, Oh my God, how old is she? She was like 5. Her favorite color was purple, so I sent her every purple card I had and I put a bunch of stickers in there because I have a niece at the same age. Getting a picture of this girl holding all these cards with just the biggest smile on her face, I'm like, this is what this is about. This is the hobby. Whenever some mom or dad reaches out for their kids, I always try to hook them up.
It’s refreshing to hear someone talk about baseball cards and collecting how they want to. Ultimately, collecting and opening packs of cards is supposed to be fun. And yes, there’s a chance you could make a ton of money if you pull a valuable card, but if that’s your goal, then a lotto ticket probably works better.
I don’t even know what my favorite baseball card I own is. I probably have 100 Will Clark ones. The one I don’t own but really want is the Andrew McCutchen one when he was on the Phillies:
Cleveland Rocks
What's your favorite part about Progressive Field? Are you a season ticket holder?
I am a season ticket holder. I sit in left field.
Ah, of course.
Not on purpose. Before I had season tickets, I sat in every single generalized section in the park and ranked them as to what I liked about them versus what I didn't like about them. Left field is the cheapest, closest you can get, while still seeing pitches, and you can still see the Jumbotron. It actually just ended up being the best spot in the park.
What do you think of all the changes they've done?
They're incredible. They're beautiful. It's so cool. Clevelanders are so lucky to have such a cool park. I go to a lot of ballparks. I feel like that's such a unique thing that we have. I love Progressive Field. It's so much fun.
They have the Fat Head’s Beer Garden and then they also have, you go up 8 floors of escalators and then it's like all spray painted by these local artists. It's free seating, too, so you can just sit anywhere. It's first come, first serve. I actually was there when the Cavs were in the playoffs and they had the game on inside. The Guardians were losing by a lot, so I was actually just inside watching the Cavs play that day. I love Progressive Field. I feel like it's gotta be gotta be, I mean, I’m biased, might be top three so far.
What's your favorite one?
So far, Fenway. It was the most nostalgic thing I've ever seen. I loved it so much. I got to go sit in the red chair. It was so cool to walk through baseball history. I'm a big baseball history nerd. I love reading about all the weird lore of old baseball cards and old baseball players. So going to Fenway was, even though the park itself isn't great and I was sitting in an area where you couldn't actually see the field, but just being there felt like I was in a movie. It was awesome.
I went to a Pirates game, Pirates tickets are cheap as hell. I sat 6 rows back behind home plate. I wanted to see Paul Skenes pitch.
What’s your next stadium you want to go do?
Well, the next one is the Tigers.
You haven't been there yet?
I haven't been there, weirdly enough. My sister was a season ticket holder a couple years ago. My sister is a season ticket holder for the Lions. They do not miss a Lions game. They skip Thanksgiving to go to Lions games, which I respect the hell out of. I think that's great. Last year I went with her to the Thanksgiving game.
Well, it's better than being a Browns fan.
I have so many thoughts on the Browns that aren't positive. I hate the Browns, but I want them to play well.
How are you with the name change?
I love the name change.
Do you like the logo?
The Flying G is fine. It's not my favorite. I love the C. The C is so cool.
I didn't know about the bridge guardians. Did you know about that bridge?
Yeah, I actually drive by every single day when I go from work to the gym. Guardians was the name I was pulling for, that's the one I wanted. I thought Blue Sox would have been sick because we were the Blue Sox before we were actually a franchise. And then everyone talked about maybe doing the Spiders, except when we were the Spiders in like 1904, we had the most losingest record of all time. So we don’t have to run that back. I love the Guardians. I love the name change. I think it really represents the city well. The discourse for the name change is crazy, but I think it's good for the city. I'm a huge fan. I love wearing Guardians across my chest.
I feel like now it’s just people trying to troll who bring up the name change and logo.
They're not going to change it back. And my rebuttal is, tons of tons of teams have changed their names, right? If you grew up a Seattle Pilots fan… it just happens. It's just never happened in this context before. I think people think too much about it. Teams change names.
It's better than changing cities like somebody did.
Right, exactly. They're still here. We have a good manager. We have Jose Ramirez, who I get to watch play baseball every day. An honor to watch him play baseball every day. And I know Cleveland’s a football city, but Cleveland goes all out for baseball.
When I was in college, my friend was a huge Kurt Warner fan. When we were in high school, he had just gotten benched by the Giants. I said, I'll bet you $1000 he never makes it to the Hall of Fame. Then he goes to the Cardinals, makes the World Series or whatever, the Super Bowl and gets in the Hall of Fame. And he was like, I'm taking your $1000 and we're all going to watch the induction in Canton in 2017. So we're like well, we're going to Cleveland for our yearly trip and everyone's, like, come on. We had fun in Cleveland. There wasn't much to do. We went to an Indians game, an abandoned amusement parks…
Dude, you gotta come back. Let me give you the proper tour of Cleveland ‘cause it's a whole different world now. You gotta have a local take you to all the good spots. I have yet to have someone come visit me and take them to see Cleveland, and they're like, oh shit, it's a great city. My friend from Boston, she now lives in Brooklyn and for a while she was living in Philadelphia. So she lived in these three major, incredible cities. And so every year we go back and forth, like, who visits who. The first time she came to Cleveland, she was like, oh, shit, this is a ton of fun. It's wildly affordable. We live on this incredible lake. We have good sports teams. The city is super vibrant. We have tons of things to do every weekend and what’s better than Ohio summer? I love the city of Cleveland. I'm not from Cleveland, but I'm a very, very proud transplant.
We ended up watching Planet of the Apes because we couldn’t find anything else to do.
Ohh man, no, you gotta come back. I'll give you the right tour.
I’m this close to being tempted enough to go back to Cleveland and see if she’s telling the truth.
As you can tell, Mikayla is an awesome person and great ambassador for the Guardians and baseball card hobby. She was born in 1994, so would have gotten into baseball in the 2000’s at first, so the fact baseball still is churning out die-hard fans even after the 90’s means it’s doing something right. Hopefully there’s still a new generation currently getting their lifelong fandom sparked at minor league parks across the country this summer.
Beautiful interview and made me smile throughout